Working With Big Brand Insurance Agent

[Chris B]

hi there,

I need some advice here... have a farmers insurance agent in a suburb outside of KC, we have him ranking great for kw + geomodifer but on his places ranking, its lacking.


one issue is we dont have access to his on page, so no onpage seo, no kml file, no geocoding, etc


he does have a lot citations than any competitor, more links, even 2 reviews which his competition has 1 or zero...


we also just got him 20 local citations via whitespark for this month...


is there anything more we can do. we have been at this for 4 months now and in another thread, im seeing 6 to 9 months for places now??

other quick notes

i have done mapmarketing, properly optimized his listing, got him a + and business page,

I was thinking by this time, we would have some better rankings for his places pages.

and one other note ... over the last few months, his kws changed from 7 pack to 3 pack.

thanks,

chris

 

[Colan Nielsen]

Hey Chris,

I feel some of your pain dealing with the big brand insurance agents.

It's hard to diagnose your clients situation without knowing some of the details.

Can you share a link to the G+ Local listing? If you can, someone here will have a far greater chance at giving you some good pointers

 

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Chris, sounds like you've done lots of the right things BUT if you can't do anything to his site that could be the limiting factor.

However you are in luck because Colan specializes in the insurance industry, knows more than anyone else about agent listings and I'm sure deals with this issue all the time. So if you want to post a link maybe Colan can give you more advice.

(Note if you choose to post a link, I'll be moving this from general discuss, down to the help section of the forum.)

 

[Chris B]

Thanks and do appreciate it. Here is his G+ local page, I did notice my description is once again edited, seems to be more of a common occurrence of late,

https://plus.google.com/115512700246561937342/about?hl=en

Thanks,

Chris

 

[Colan Nielsen]

I did notice my description is once again edited, seems to be more of a common occurrence of late
Chris

This is a common issue with most big insurance companies I've dealt with. It's normally due to a corporate feed that the agents are usually automatically submitted to. I haven't dealt with this aspect with any Farmers Agents personally though. Do you know if this is the case with Farmers, do they have a corporate bulk feed type of deal going on?

If this is the case I would suggest that you try and get in touch with whoever is in charge of the corporate listings and see if there is a way to have the agent opted out.

Bottom line is that having a listing claimed in multiple accounts is a recipe for disaster.

 

[MiriamEllis]

I can't contribute any personal experience to this thread, but just wanted to say it's great to know about Colan's expertise in Big Insurance. Good to know for future possible reference. Colan - you're in a tough market. I'm impressed

 

[JoyHawkins]

I thought I'd jump on here and comment as well. I work for the same company as Colan

So I can confirm that at one point Farmers definitely did have a feed. However, lately I don't see any evidence of it. Normally when I suspect a feed is involved is when you see tons of local listings that all have the exact same format. I did some searching and can't seem to find that with Farmers (Allstate + State Farm both have feeds). The majority of the listings out there don't even appear claimed. What I would guess is that this listing is claimed somewhere in some old account that the agent forgot about. What I would recommend doing is submit a troubleshooter request: My listing has incorrect information.

Go through our step-by-step troubleshooters to find Help articles that can assist with your issue. And if we still haven't answered your question, fill out the short form at the end of the questions to and tell Google the description on the listing is wrong (doesn't match your account). Then in the comments section before you submit, specifically ask them if this listing is claimed by anyone else or if it is on a feed. Tell them you suspect that it was set up in a different account a long time ago and no one has access to it anymore and ask for it to be removed so that your email is the only one that has it claimed.

Also a huge thing with insurance agents is how long they've been in business. Do you know when this guy started his agency?

I noticed as well that he, like most agents, has 2 domain names: Olathe Home & Auto Insurance | Richard Gramza | Farmers Insurance Agent and Welcome to the Gramza Insurance Agency. When you're link building, make sure you are consistent. I noticed most of the directories list gramzainsurance.com and you're using the farmersagent.com one on your listing.

I also think you have some serious NAP issues. This isn't anything new with insurance. Check this out: Shannon Forbes - Farmers Insurance in Lamesa, TX | 606 N 4th St, Lamesa, TX. That listing has your client's website address on some Texas agent's listing. I hate Superpages and am not surprised they messed that up. Oh, and it gets better. His Superpages listing links to an agent in IL. Richard Gramza - Farmers Insurance in Olathe, KS | 1578 S Mahaffie Cir, Olathe, KS. *sigh*

Finally, I noticed that he has some crazy, black-hat-appearing backlinking going on. I don't know if this is you or not but look at this: Edit comment | ASIAN PACKAGING FEDERATION. I'm not sure if linking like that will send the best signals to Google. I found some others like that as well.

---------- Post Merged at 10:15 PM ---------- Previous Post was at 10:13 PM ----------

Yikes...I don't know why my answer is all bolded. I didn't do that lol!

 

[Linda Buquet]

Great info Colan and Joy. Knew you guys would have some deeper insights!

Since Chris posted a link to client, I'm moving this down to the help section and we can continue to discuss there. (There will be a re-direct so you can find it.)

 

[Colan Nielsen]

I noticed that your client isn't listed on the 3 major data providers (Localeze, Acxiom, InfoUSA). I would get his correct NAP plus some categories onto them.

InfoUSA is free.

Acxiom currently states that: "Please note that your first five listings are free however each additional listing will be $50.00. "

Localeze, you can pay for an enhanced listing or you can do a free listing which would involve creating an account with the client's e-mail and verifying.

 

[Chris B]

Thanks everyone but I might have not explained myself well enough. The description was in reference to his G+ local page, I wrote the description out but Google changed it.


Answer to some questions...


The reason for using the famers page is his Gramza is bc all the links on that page redirects to the Farmers page.


I had to have my guy scale back on aggressiveness on some linking.


Thanks for the big heads up on the 2 different domains in citations.


I dont think hes been in business that long, mabye a few years is my guess. I have a partner who handles the sales/client side.


I was trying to run another competition report in places scout but froze on me, but on the last one I ran, I was seeing sites that didnt even have many citations, or even a full optimized places listing, and other big branded insurance companies in there.


And thats where my confusion is coming in. I know these other big branded sites have same problem with not having on page done or much control over it.


so in addition to fixing up some of the dupe citations and im also getting more local ones for him, is there anything else I can be doing to help his places rankings. his organic for kw + city name is great, just dont know how many searches there is for that compared to kw only.

And thanks colan on the big 3, I will get him listed in there.

Chris

 

[Chris B]

Hi Colan, is there anything else you could recommend for this client. I do have a press release going out for him along with some niche citations for this month, too.

Thanks

Chris

 

[Colan Nielsen]

It looks like he's almost there, top of page 2 for some primary keywords.

If you are familiar with Map Maker, I would take a look at this article and make sure your categories are added/cleaned up:

What Should Your Business Listing Categories Be in MapMaker | Understanding Google Places Local Search

Not 100% sure of all the different impacts MM has on Google+ Local just yet, but I think it's a good idea to ensure that everything is clean there.

Of course, proceed with caution as MM is still like a sixth sense. We are aware of it and even try to get in touch with it. But at this point in the game, there are only a small handful of experts who truly understand it.